Day: February 2, 2017

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and businessman Dan Gilbert are set to announce Microsoft is moving downtown from the suburbs. TechCrunch has confirmed the move with several trusted sources and learned that Microsoft will occupy 50,000 square feet in One Campus Martius, a building owned in part by Dan Gilbert and home to a large chunk of the Quicken Loans team. Microsoft’s Detroit operation… Read More

Chinese banks are now global leaders not just by asset base but also brand value, according to the latest version of Brand Finance Banking 500, which shows the combined value of Chinese banks has surpassed that of US banks for the first time.

Microsoft has formally asked the US Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security to grant it and other companies an exemption to the Trump administration’s executive order that restricts entry or re-entry of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order, which was signed last Friday, affects immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Los Angeles “enjoined and restrained” the president’s executive order for the time being—following similar temporary restraining orders that other judges have also issued in recent days in related lawsuits filed elsewhere. While the executive order is theoretically halted for the time being, the various restraining orders around the country don’t provide any predictable, long-term solution as of yet, legal experts say.

“This is very disruptive to a business model,” Lenni Benson, an immigration law professor at New York Law School, told Ars, noting that many companies are starting to ponder what the long-term ramifications of such a ban are, especially if it is eventually upheld in court.

(NEW YORK) — Hundreds of ethnic Yemeni business owners who operate New York City corner bodegas and neighborhood delis closed shop Thursday in protest of President Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The shops were locked at noon and were to remain shuttered until 8 p.m., according to organizers of a late afternoon rally in downtown Brooklyn. At least 1,000 Yemeni-run small businesses are a part of many New Yorkers’ daily lives, said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who planned to attend the rally.

Haron Zokari closed his Manhattan deli at noon, as well. He said his wife and baby are stuck in Yemen after almost completing a four-year, green-card process.

“We are trying to stay strong,” he said. “There’s people there who are refugees and who are starving and running for their lives, so thank God we don’t have it as bad as they do.”

Trump’s executive order barred people from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Under the order, travelers have been detained, sent back from the United States or stranded in other countries.

Zaid Nagi, who owns three delis in the Bronx, said the ban disrupted plans to bring his mother to the United States, where he has lived for more than 20 years. The 36-year-old married father of four said the point of the protest was to say, “We are part of this community. We are not who this order is trying to say we are.”

He said most of his customers had expressed solidarity with the shutdown.

“They know who we are. They know we are human beings just like them,” he said. “I believe in the good people of America.”

Ousted Snapchat early employee Reggie Brown was paid $157.5 million in a settlement in September 2014 to close off a 2013 lawsuit he had brought against other co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, alleging that they had taken his original idea and run with it, pushing him out of the company without compensation in the process.
The details were made public for the first time in… Read More